writing, again

4/10/2013

i have kept every word i have ever written, more or less, since i was a child. in folders, notebooks and binders, folded up slips of paper stuck in old diaries. i'm not sure why. the only justification i have is a lecture i attended once given by bell hooks, while i was at stanford, in which she relayed a story of how, in a fit of rage, she burned all her old journals.

then a teenager, i could not imagine such a rage as that and yet could understand the pain she felt at losing them. but i am mature now and finally understand rage, have myself flirted with the idea of simply ridding myself of all these words. there is a fear somewhere in there that losing one is like losing myself, my identity: the quiet, young girl who hardly spoke her mind, but instead wrote it all down waiting for the day when she would share her thoughts. fantasizing about the day, upon her death, when someone would discover a trove of journals detailing the mundane details of her existence and decide it was a life worth living.

the blog thing, well i could have never predicted that--it fills an interesting space. not quite writing, but not quite not writing either. i am excited to be done with school, forever, in a few weeks. i can get back to writing. it goes away for awhile, like an absent friend, yet it always returns, and never leaves me. --AL.